Liveblogging Finishing Get Your Money Together Workbook

What’s happening

The next 3 days (January 12th – 14th), I’m scheduled off all other projects (my side job; hosting the radio show) and I have a list of things I need to finish on Get Your Money Together workbook in advance of the ebook deadline on January 31st (when all kickstarter backers will receive their book!) I must get this done! So every couple hours I’ll be writing here what I worked on.

By the way, if you didn’t get a chance to back the kickstarter but want to get that sweet ebook on 1/31, you can pre-order here right now for $5! 

Why I am live blogging

Last Saturday (the 6th) I was supposed to wrap the design & formatting  up on this book and had a nice day set aside for it. I sat down at my computer, ready to work, and then I catalogued all of my clothing into a giant spreadsheet over 13 hours. And got nothing done on the book.

Even if no one actually looks at this liveblog page, a little bit of public accountability will probably help keep me on track. I want to get these books to all the amazing kickstarter backers on time!

The list

Here’s the list of what’s left to do. As I finish things off, I’ll cross them off. If I add things to the original list as I discover items that need to be done, they’ll be in blue.

  • Edit introduction
  • Format list of kickstarter backers in back of book
  • Insert cat illustrations in chapter headings
  • Adjust margins for print
  • Add the discussion questions to every chapter
  • Create “backer cat” name page
  • Insert Case Studies into chapters in-line
  • Format table of contents
  • Consider subtitle
  • Format front matter
  • Format Debt Snowball Chapter
  • Format Retirement allocation chapter with cat toys
  • Update appendix budgeting forms to new font
  • Format Values worksheets
  • Format Paperclip Exercise in back
  • Write thank you page
  • Write author bio (ugh)
  • Resize every single page down to paperback size with print bleeds
  • Make sure there is at least 1 cat analogy and 3 cat puns per chapter

Plus (just so I get credit for doing these important human things):

  • Go to the gym on Friday opps nope
  • Make dinner on Friday
  • Make dinner on Saturday
  • Go to the gym on Sunday
  • Make dinner on Sunday

12:00PM, Sunday (1/14) Well, the blessings of small business is that when things get derailed, I am the person who must answer the call. Had an interesting and surprising business thing cross my desk and spent the morning on that. Now I’m running downstairs to meet some friends for lunch before one of them moves all the way across the country and then onto a ship for 6+ months.

7:05AM, Sunday (1/14) Time to get ‘er done! Did a morning workout, had my breakfast tacos, took a shower, and it’s still dark out! Feeling much better today. Let’s go!


6:56PM, Saturday (1/13) I need to fold for the day. My body and mind are pretty overwhelmed. Making things is so hard. I hope to cross at least half the things left on that list (11 left as of now) tomorrow. I only have ~4 more days not filled with other commitments left before this book is due into the world. So tomorrow is a day to get much further than I did today (logged 5.75 hours today on this project). Today & yesterday I skipped working out, so I’ll start the day tomorrow with a workout hoping that will kickstart the creative process.

My body and mind are pretty overwhelmed. Making things is so hard.

5:59PM, Saturday (1/13) My less frequent updates are a result of my lower productivity today – pretty physically wiped and not having a super-awesome time of it. I also got very distracted this afternoon. As Aaron said “this is why lots of people post instagram pictures and not everyone writes a book.”  This sh*t is hard. I’m choosing one small task left to do for the evening and then I’m calling it a night, hoping to get in a good 8.5 hours of on-task work tomorrow.

1:27PM, Saturday (1/13) Was feeling slightly ill, and ended up taking a 90 minute nap with kitten. Got myself some caffeinated treats and am still dragging, but trying to make up for it with excitement! over! table of contents! layouts!

9:28AM, Saturday (1/13) Just finished formatting the whole sub-chapter on student loan repayment options, which was enough to make me want to lay down on the floor for a bit. Now I’m left with the question of which chapter title to choose:  Retir-Purr-Ment: Financial Independence & Investing or Investing: The Power of Compound In-Purr-Est.

8:49AM, Saturday (1/13) I have a headache, am tired, and have officially run out of pages. So now I’m busy adjusting font sizes and margins but would rather have a nap.

7:20AM, Saturday (1/13) I got going a bit late this morning (we didn’t go to sleep until 10PM last night do to unexpected – but delightful- dinner guests.) Sat down at the computer at 7 after breakfast and coffee to get working, and discovered overnight my spotify account had suffered rather terrible side effects and had deleted my premium account and all my listening history. So just wasted 20 minutes dealing with that, but now I’m back to book design. Big goal for the next two hours: formatting the debt snowball/avalanche chapter. Lots of fiddly cat pictures.


5:00PM, Friday (1/12) I am running out of steam. Since I last checked in, I did some writing for a freelance piece and cleaned the apartment a bit. Today I’ve only clocked 4.8 hours of active design time on this book, and I still have a long way to go. I did, however, get every chapter header spread done with the appropriate cats in. They are pretty cute. I still need to go to the gym and cook dinner, so I’m giving this another hour and am then folding in for the night. To more productivity tomorrow!

1:35PM, Friday (1/12) Fell off the book wagon again, getting lost in reading articles about page number design. Answered several emails and set up two meetings. Made lunch (Pasta + Veggies + Vegan Cheese Sauce). Only one of those things was supposed to happen. Now I’m back at it. The goal is to get all cat artwork in and formatted over all 108 pages, and all chapter headers finished before I’m done for the day (by ~6:30PM hopefully.)

11:45AM, Friday (1/12) Aaron had pointed out that my margins were a bit too small so now I’m going around the house measuring book margins and getting cranky at Aaron for pointing out an excellent thing that is probably helping me but involves more work now.

Oh how I wish I was a professional book designer and not just a punk cat-loving financial radio host with a copy of InDesign.

In other news, my page numbers are now cats (see –>).


10:42AM, Friday (1/12) 
Back on the book horse; spent about 5 minutes at the grocery store paging through book layouts and taking small notes. Also got groceries for dinner + lunch since our weekly meal plan only went through breakfast this morning.

10:10AM, Friday (1/12) I said I was taking a break, and then I didn’t take a break and kept formatting cat photos. I am going to go for a walk to get a nice treat from the grocery store 3 blocks away. Back to work by 10:50AM.

9:45AM, Friday (1/12) My clicking finger hurts a bit from laying out 35 pages of the book into the new print size, so I am going to take a break. I keep editing text as I go along, which is not the goal. 1/3 of the way there, though! Then the “actual work” begins.

8:35AM, Friday (1/12) I am finally working on the book (yay!!), and discovered for some reason the document was set up with a bigger font & page size than I am printing. So now I am shrinking and copying page by page the entire book into a new, appropriately sized (6″ x 8″ with .125″ bleeds) document.

Meanwhile, thanks to Autostraddle, I have discovered there are cat fonts and now I must use one on the headers if I can find one meant for commercial use.


7:30AM, Friday (1/12) 
Well, I have a cup of coffee in hand, and at this point have been awake for 2.5 hours, yet somehow I still haven’t opened up the actual indesign document for the book. I wonder how much longer I can avoid that for. I have: looked at my google analytics pages, eaten breakfast, petted the cat, uploaded new images in backerkit, started this blog post, and read an article about Divvy bike share. So this is going great.

5 thoughts on “Liveblogging Finishing Get Your Money Together Workbook

  1. *squints intently at you to make sure you are being productive and not just endlessly browsing cat fonts*

    This is how you do accountability, right?

  2. I once had a job where someone had laid out a 400-page book without finding out what the dimensions should be first. They just thought, “oh, this is roughly book-sized, surely that’s close enough!” When they found out the entire thing had to actually be made to a specific size, with specific margins, etc. they decided they were sick of the whole thing and hired me to redo the entire document.

    So what I’m saying is: been there, done that, feel your pain.

    1. I am so so glad this is not 400 pages. That being said, I am stuck in page-number-where-do-I-put-them margin land. Oh my gosh, just because I *can* design doesn’t mean I *should*.

      1. The person who wrote and started to lay out that 400-page book swears she would never, ever, ever, write a book again and any time someone asks her about it (it’s one of those things, you write a book and then everyone comes to you with questions about writing books forever – no doubt expecting helpful tips and encouragement) she will give them a thirty-minute rant about all the reasons they should absolutely, positively, never, ever, ever try to write a book.

        You are approximately 1000% more productive than that person, though. So that should help :-)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *